The Le Pen Connection

While Le Pen shouts herself hoarse, denouncing “the nuisance power of globalised finance, which is going against national interest”, the accountants in her party are hiding money abroad. Ideological lies. Financial lies. That is what it is.

At the heart of the furnace of the Panama Papers, which sheds new light on methods to avoid taxation, organised by powerful people, and incidentally how much it costs our companies to maintain their antisocial secrecy, we now discover – and this comes as no surprise to us - the names of some friends of the Le Pen family, whom the newspaper Le Monde calls "experts in tax havens."

That’s to state it mildly. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) has helped uncover an ultra-sophisticated system for concealment of financial holdings, organised in offshore centers in Asia and the Caribbean "by the inner circle of the President the National Front", the evening newspaper says that this is “in order to move money out of France by the means of shell companies and fake invoices”.

The records of Panamanian firm Mossack Fonseca, which only represents a very, very small part of the reality of tax evasion on a global scale, also provides a striking picture of Jean-Marie Le Pen’s personal fortune, a part of which is stashed away in a perfectly opaque way. We are talking about bank notes, stock certificates, bullion and gold coins. In the wake of these worldwide revelations, the masks of the family and of their cronies have slipped off!

Do not be surprised. The Front National’s double standards aren’t just ideological.
While Marine Le Pen yells herself hoarse about "the nuisance power of global finance, which goes against national interest", her party’s accountants have been hiding money abroad.

Ideological lies. Financial lies. That is all it is. For the "Le Pen connection", which thrives on capitalism and cash, national and nationalist reconciliation is put under the aegis of capital. Let us remind these preachers of xenophobia that to be a part of the nation - and to have only that word in their mouths - is assessed in the first instance by meeting one’s tax obligations.

It’s called the Republic. The fantasy that the extreme right is ready to challenge the capitalists on behalf of the workers is a shameful hoax. We did not need new evidence to support what we already knew. But now we have it in any case.